Renown of the Raithlin: Book One of the Raithlindrath Series (17 page)

The steep descent into the cleft slowed and stopped.
It was not so much a valley as an opening through a long ridge of high hills.
Oaks rose all about them, mountainous trees bigger than he had ever seen. Their
trunks were so large that a dozen men joined hand to hand would scarcely
encircle them. Huge boughs weighted with the growth of countless years drooped
to the ground. Carnona came to a halt. Her feet sank deep into the earthy
remnant of ancient leaves, and she lifted her arms, stiff like tree branches.

“We are come to a sacred place. Few men have walked
Enorìen, and none has seen this grove. Here, ùhrengai is strong. It courses
deep below the earth, and the tree roots tap it. It rises in their sap. It
flows through their trunks into branch and twig. It glistens like dew on the
leaves when the full moon waxes.”

Her solemn voice took on a note of reverence as she
pointed toward a branch.

“There is the mistletoe you seek. It is not of earth
or air. It is green of leaf but not rooted in the ground. See how the berries
shine in the starlight?”

Lanrik followed her gesture. The mistletoe, like a
bird’s nest in the oak’s branches, had small berries that glowed palely in the
shadows.

Carnona dropped her hand and spun to the lòhren. “I
have considered the price. It shall be paid or you will not have the berries.”

“What is it?”

“Each shall give according to their measure. You
have walked the lands of Alithoras as I once did before the Halathrin came. I
wondered far and wide before Man or Elug, Dweorh or Lethrin. I travelled the
dry south and endured the cold north. I beheld the rain-drenched coasts to our
east and the far westward cliffs where the sun sets in red glory. I walked all
the land, and everywhere the ùhrengai was strong. Now it is weak. I would have
things as they were in my youth. I would have trees again in the southern
mountains that are now called Graèglin Dennath.”

Aranloth looked at her. “No one, not even a creature
of ùhrengai, can recapture the past that is gone,” he said gently. “It is the
fate of all who live that they yearn for what they have lost.”

Carnona barked her hard laugh. “Do you think me a
fool? I know that, better even than the lòhrens, even the eldest of them. I do
not seek to have what cannot be, yet trees can grow once more in those
mountains, even if only in places where there lingers a remnant of the power
that was. Such a place you must seek and plant the seeds I will give you. Even
you might be surprised at their hardiness. They will not flourish, not while
the shadow of the enemy gropes over the mountains and stretches to the north.
Yet they will survive in readiness for a time when the shadow is no more and
they can thrive.”

Aranloth ran a hand through his hair. “Yet while the
shadow holds sway in those mountains, it is perilous for such as me to walk
them.”

“And yet you have done so in the past.”

Aranloth bowed his head gravely. “It is as you say.
And I will pay your price.”

Lanrik felt uneasy as the dark eyes of the Guardian
turned on him. She studied him for some time, her gaze stripping bare his
thoughts much as Aranloth had done at their first meeting. Carnona was
different though. Aranloth had seen a vast store of humanity, the good and the
bad, and he knew what people felt and why they did things. Carnona had no
interest in people; she was only interested in how they could serve her
purposes. He did not think she was bad, it was just her nature, but he sensed
that not only would it be futile to try to deceive her, it would be deadly.

“You are marked by Alithoras,” she said. “The sun
and moon, heat and cold, day and night, the dry and the wet of the wild lands
are stamped upon you.”

Lanrik gave a nod of affirmation but did not speak.
He noticed that her gaze lingered on the trotting fox motif of his cloak.

“You are a Raithlin.” She stated it as fact rather
than a question, but Lanrik answered.

“Yes.”

“My price is this. You must teach your kind, the
Raithlin yet to come, the love of the land that is in you.”

Lanrik’s spirits dropped. “I would if I could. But I
cannot. Their long history of more than a thousand years has ended. They’ve
been disbanded.”

Carnona laughed. “A thousand years? What is that to
me? If you had lived as long as I, you would see the future thrust forward like
a shadow of the past. But the Raithlin will return in your time. If you can not
believe that, it will be enough that you make the promise to pay my price
should I be proved correct.”

Lanrik looked to the lòhren, but Aranloth’s eyes
showed nothing of what he thought.

He turned to Carnona. “I will do it.”

As suddenly as she had focused her attention on him
she withdrew it and scrutinized Erlissa. A long time she looked at her, as if
in doubt. Erlissa waited patiently, enduring the force of her attention
dispassionately and seeming not to care what price would be asked. She would
pay it if she could, otherwise she would not. Lanrik was getting to know her,
though not as well as she knew him.

Carnona folded her arms once more and reached a
decision. “A price must be paid, though you are not ready to fulfil it. I will
accept this. You must return and speak with me again. At that time, I will tell
you what I want.”

“What if it’s something that I won’t do?”

“You will do it, I think.” For the first time
Carnona’s gaze held a hint of compassion, and Lanrik wondered if he had
misjudged her. “You would not now, but you will change before your journey with
the lòhren is ended. It will be enough if you promise to return.”

“Very well. Though how will I know when to do so?”

Carnona regarded her with dark eyes. “You will know.
Follow your instincts and you will hear the call.”

She turned away and toward the east. “It is time!”

Lanrik glanced at the horizon. The half moon was
rising above a jagged line of distant hills. Shafts of moonlight stabbed
through the canopy, and Carnona shivered at the caress of each silvery beam.
Lanrik realized that the time to pick the berries was now, and it would last
but moments.

Aranloth dropped his staff and sprang toward the
oak. He was an old man, but he moved with the quickness of youth. He leapt
effortlessly onto one of the low hanging boughs, gripped a higher branch with
his arms, and swung his body up and over it.

He repeated the same action several times and was
half-way up the tree in moments. Then, taking slow and precise steps, he walked
along the branch until he reached the mistletoe.

The berries had responded to the rays of moonlight
with a pulsing glow but were already starting to fade. Aranloth knelt, mindful
of his balance and the long fall to the ground, and plucked three of them. He
slipped them in a pocket while the light of the remainder diminished and
finally blinked out.

He descended the tree with the same ease but less
haste than he had used on the way up, and when he was close enough he jumped
smoothly to the soft leaf mold below. He returned to the others, not even out
of breath.

“Now we have a chance!” he said. “The elùgroths
won’t have everything their own way.”

Carnona observed him with her nut-brown eyes. “They
pose less threat to you at the moment than Ebona. Not lightly did her servants
leave my domain. And they still wait for you without.”

Aranloth ran a hand through his hair. “I’ll deal
with them if I must.”

Carnona considered them all briefly. “We will meet
again.” Her gaze lingered on Erlissa. “For now, I have other tasks and you must
rest. Sleep in the grove tonight, and do not leave it until the sun rises.
Elsewhere, Enorìen is dangerous.”

She looked at Aranloth. “When you wake in the
morning you will find the seeds. They will last a long while – but plant them
soon!”

Without waiting for an answer, she turned and strode
away. The moonlight glistened on the dark shadow of her hair until she passed
from view.

Erlissa let out a long breath. “So that was the
Guardian.”

“One of them,” Aranloth said. “Our meeting could
have been worse . . . they have little love for our kind.”

Lanrik rubbed his eyes. “Her advice was good though.
I feel like I haven’t slept in weeks, and it’s time to rest.”

They shared some food and then got ready to sleep.
It was difficult though. Not long after Carnona left, noise and movement
commenced in the dim light at the edge of the grove.

After a while, a mighty stag came into view. His
flared antlers were only part grown, and at times he gave a deep-throated roar
even though it was not yet the rutting season.

An old and solitary aurochs bull moved in the
half-shadows as well. His horns were swept forward, and he loosed shattering bellows
from his enormous bulk. He used his front hooves to gauge deep scrapes in the
ground and flung the loose earth behind him in fury.

A wickedly tusked boar came last of all, and he
grunted in the darkness and thrashed his tusks against root and bush.

“Pay them no heed,” Aranloth said.

He followed his own advice and fell asleep quickly.
Lanrik and Erlissa found it harder, yet none of the beasts ventured into the
grove, and Carnona’s word was true. They were safe within it, and they slept,
albeit fitfully.

The half moon sailed high overhead and faded at the
arrival of a hushed and golden dawn.

When they woke, they were more refreshed than they
expected to be. Carnona had returned through the night and silently left a
small bark container near the lòhren’s staff. Of the beasts, there was no sign.

The travelers retraced their steps through the
cleft, and then headed out toward the fringes of Enorìen.

“What of Mecklar?” Lanrik asked the lòhren.

“He and his followers will be waiting, but whether
they will try to find our trail or head us off is hard to say. Either way,
Ebona will aid them, and we won’t be able to hide for long.”

They continued until dusk came. Aranloth led them to
the northward edge of the hills.

“We’ll camp here and in the morning strike toward
where the Erenian River forks from the Carist Nien. Between the two is an
island and a good place to cross.”

Dawn of the next day found them leaving both hill
and forest and riding across the open and flat lands between the two rivers.

Aranloth swept his arm in a wide arc. “The land in
front of us is called the Angle,” he said. “Near the fork itself the ground is
sometimes flooded by one or both rivers.”

They crossed the road that led around Enorìen and
down to the coastal city of Camarelon. It was the same road that led back to
Esgallien, and Lanrik had a sudden feeling as he past beyond it that he was
leaving his old life forever.

“Ahead and to the east are the cities of Menetuin
and Faladir,” Aranloth continued. “They were founded by tribes related to
Conhain’s people.”

“I’ve heard of them,” Lanrik said. “Esgallien trades
with those places, but more so with Camarelon.”

“Where’s Cardoroth from here?” asked Erlissa.

“Red Cardoroth is much further north,” the lòhren
said. “It’s near to Lake Alithorin. It too was founded during the great
migration of people from the west. But we’ll be veering to the left. One day
you may both see those other cities, though you’ll find none better than
Esgallien.”

They travelled on, and Lanrik warmed to the new lands
that he was seeing and the names of places that were mere rumor to him, or
better yet, never heard of like Cardoroth. He would like to see them one day.
Aranloth knew so much, but he sometimes explained little. How had a city come
to be called red?

There was no sign of pursuit, and several peaceful
but tiring days passed. The land was deforested and fertile. People had lived
here once, though there was no sign of them now except for hints of old roads
and the many fruit trees seeded from ancient orchards.

Two nights out from Enorìen, they established their
camp and risked a fire. They used deadwood from a long fallen apple trunk and
enjoyed the fragrant smoke as well as the warmth.

Aranloth took the first watch and woke Lanrik
sometime before midnight. The lòhren settled behind him, and Erlissa remained
asleep off to the side.

The fire gradually died to shimmering embers as the
night passed, and a chill seeped into the air. Lanrik placed a branch on the
coals and sparks suddenly flew. The fire flared, and a tongue of flame rose
high in the air and twisted into a human figure.

Lanrik jumped back and drew his sword. He was going
to yell to wake the others, but the blade was so reassuring in his hand that he
felt himself equal to any challenge.

The flame-figure spoke, its voice soft and tenuous
like a wisp of smoke.

“Why do you draw cold steel?”

The apparition made no threatening move, but Lanrik
was unwilling to sheath his blade.

“Come closer,” the voice asked. “Let me see you
properly.”

He took slow and careful steps with the sword-tip
held high. He saw now that the flame-figure was a woman. He could not tell her
age, which disturbed him, but she was tall and long haired and wore a white
dress cinched with a red belt at the waist.

She tossed her hair and sparks flew. “Why so
untrusting?”

“Who
are
you? And what do you want? Speak
truthfully, and I’ll trust you more.”

The flame-figure peered at him closely. After a
moment, she nodded.

“I think you have grown much in the last few weeks.
But it is not so easy to discern truth from falsehood.”

“Perhaps. But I’ll judge as I can.”

“Very well! I shall tell the truth!”

She pinned him with wide-set eyes that flashed fire.
“I am Ebona. Some call me a witch. I suppose I am that, too, but once I was
something else, someone of greater power. And I will be that again, and more.”

Her breathing quickened as she spoke, and her chest
rose and fell as the fire writhed about her.

“I see recognition in your eyes. The lòhren has
spoken of me.”

Lanrik took a pace back. “Do you deny that you sent
Mecklar and the others to kill us?”

Ebona laughed, and sparks shot from her mouth. “I
deny nothing! I bade my servants to kill you, yet even as we speak, I regret
it. I am inclined to change my mind.”

“Why would you do that?”

She leaned toward him. “Because of you.”

“Me? What does that mean?”

“Are you always so modest? No! Do not answer. I can
tell that you are, so I will say what you will not.”

Ebona drew herself up. She looked regal; power was
in her glance and beauty in her figure that made him tremble. She seemed the
queen of the world.

“Are you not smarter, braver and more handsome than
Mecklar? You have shown determination and resourcefulness beyond his reach. You
have rare and valuable qualities, but what have they earned you? You have fled
your homeland. The Raithlin are disbanded. And Mecklar, a lesser man,
prospers.”

Lanrik thought on her words and did not answer for a
moment.

“He’s done well. What of it?”

Ebona pursed her lips. “Are you always so direct? No
matter! I am direct myself when it suits me.
What of it?
Simply this.
Mecklar is under my influence. You, who are a better man, could achieve more.
In truth, I do not think there is anything you could not achieve. As I have
helped Mecklar, I could help you.”

She looked at him, and her eyes were alight with
emotion. “Would you like to return to Esgallien? I can make it so! Would you
like the Raithlin reinstated? They can be! I can bend the king to my will,
weak-minded fool that he is. He attained the position by birth, but he has not
earned the right. You, who by your deeds have proven yourself, would make a
better king. I, Ebona, could make it so!”

She raised herself even taller, and fire flashed
from her eyes. Lanrik felt hot and sweat beaded his face.

“Do you doubt me?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Then join me! Leave this business of Aranloth’s
behind you. He has dragged you into events that are of no concern to you. What
are you doing here, a plaything for lòhrens when you could rule the lands of
your birth . . . with me by your side?”

Her voice softened. “Would you like that, Lanrik?
Does the prospect excite you?”

He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of
his hand. Suddenly swaying with dizziness, he gripped the sword more tightly.
He had a sudden urge to leave the camp, to go back to Esgallien and find Ebona.
If he did so he knew that they would become allies. And with power such as hers
to help him, he could achieve anything. But something at the back of his mind
worried him.
What would Erlissa say?

He turned and looked at her. She was asleep; her
dark hair was ruffled, and she rested her head carelessly in the crook of her
arm. He knew what she would say, heard in his head the very tone of her voice.
He felt a sudden and piercing love, sharper than steel and hotter than flame.

He shifted his gaze back to Ebona. She was waiting
for him, her arms crossed against her chest, and thick thumbs pressed against
her milk-white flesh.

“I have all that I desire,” he said.

Ebona stood still for a few moments, and then
stretched a long arm toward him.

“If you are not with me, you are against me. Would
you make me an enemy? I do not wish to kill you, but I will if I must.”

“I won’t join you,” he said.

“Then you will die!”

Ebona towered above him, and her eyes burned with
fury. Fire twisted and spun around her, and sparks streamed into the sky.

Lanrik stepped back and heard a movement behind him.

Aranloth had sat up. “Do not fear,” the lòhren said.
“It’s only Ebona’s image, and it has no power in the camp. She is nothing but
smoke and fire.”

The lòhren did not look sleepy, and Lanrik wondered
if he had been awake all along.

Ebona fixed Aranloth with fiery eyes. “No power?
Once you made it so. But I endured. And now I am strong enough to take my
revenge!”

The witch gathered herself, and then stepped out of
the fire and into the camp.

Aranloth snatched up his staff and sprang between
her and Erlissa.

“You surprise me,” he said. “But your image still
has no power.”

Ebona paced like a stalking cat. “She must die,
lòhren. It is my will, and it shall be accomplished.”

Lanrik had heard enough. He lunged forward and
thrust his sword into her, but it passed through harmlessly. He withdrew the
blade and saw a flicker of firelight where there should have been a wound.

She spun on him. “Fool! I offered you everything.
Now you shall have nothing! Did you think you could injure me with a sword?”

She turned her back on him and stepped toward
Erlissa.

Aranloth raised his staff. “You cannot contend with
me, Ebona. Not while you are so distant from your body. And not in this land
where I am strong.”

She smiled at him. “Are you really so sure, lòhren?”

Lanrik desperately wanted to do something, but he
was at a loss. The witch took another step forward, and Aranloth looked as
though he was about to bring lòhrengai to bear. If he was forced to do so,
Erlissa could be hurt in the confrontation.

A thin tendril of smoke linked Ebona to the fire,
and an idea occurred to him. Instead of attacking her, he slashed at it with
his sword. She flinched but continued forward and the smoke rejoined.

Aranloth raised his staff higher, and white flame
ran along its length. The diadem on his brow glittered, and his eyes narrowed
with concentration.

Lanrik knew the smoke somehow connected Ebona to the
fire. It was in it that she had first appeared and must be the key to her
presence, but what use could he make of that knowledge?

The witch moved forward. Her arms lifted, and her
fingers formed claws in the air.